TED on the Run: How a Conference Copes With Success — and Brickbats

A 13-year-old Maasai who wired up a novel electrical system to discourage lions from attacking his Kenyan village’s cattle. Two teenage girls from Vancouver who sought out river bacteria that can biodegrade plastic trashbags. A 10-year-old banjo virtuoso who makes Earl Scruggs sound sluggish. A 15-year-old who used carbon nanotubes to produce a dead-accurate, non-invasive test for pancreatic cancer that is 28 times faster, and 28 times less expensive than current tests. A scientist who designed a safe, low-cost nuclear power plant, and plans to produce these around the world — after he finishes high school.

The TED Conference — the high-mental-octane annual conclave whose goal is to foment “ideas worth spreading” — has a soft spot for inspiration, and this year its theme of “The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered.” provided an excuse to unleash a phalanx of uplifting prodigies among a roster of over 80 presenters. But what of those who somehow reach their twenties with no venture capital funding, MacArthur grants, or record deals? Clinical psychologist Meg Jay had some alarming news for those youngsters. One’s twenties are utterly defining, she told the TED audience — and if you don’t get yourself together by the end of that decade, you’re pretty much doomed.

Ironically, it is TED itself that’s about to wrap up its twenties. The operation turns 30 next year. But Meg Jay would probably approve of TED’s life choices so far. It began the decade as a relatively cloistered gathering of the elite that regarded the parade of brainiacs, artists, and self-help gurus as crown jewels to be cloistered. Over the last few years, its essential nature has been changed by its wildly successful transformation to a public platform — not only with over a billion free views of TED talks but by authorizing thousands of amateur idea-impresarios to run their own mini-TED conferences, called TEDx. The main conference itself sells out every year, despite a $7,500 entrance fee.

Yet the spoils of success have led to tough choices and some unwelcome attention. Five years ago TED left its original beloved and intimate venue in Monterey, California, for a bigger, splashier facility a few hundred miles south in Long Beach, California—like a twenty-something’s move from home. Attendees have not warmed to Long Beach, and moan that the conference seems more impersonal. Next year, TED will move again, to Vancouver, British Columbia where its team will design a special stage optimized for talks. TED will also limit attendance to about 1,200, a slight decrease from the current 1,400. But TED-sters, many of whom still haven’t adjusted to the fact that the conference is no longer in Monterey, don’t know what to make of the move.

Meanwhile, the wild popularity of free TED talks online have put the conference on the map — and spurred a wave of criticism.

Every year as the conference begins, a certain strain of bloggers and Tweeters indulge in a TED hatefest. Some attacks focus on the high price of the conference. Others rail against TED’s annoying do-goodism, its loopy optimism about science, and its relentless pursuit of “wonder.” Evgeny Morozov, in The New Republic jumped to the front of the TED-hater line by proclaiming, “TED is no longer a responsible curator of ideas ‘worth spreading.’ Instead it has become something ludicrous, and a little sinister.”

The criticism has stung those on the TED staff, who consider themselves on a mission to inform, inspire, and even bring about change. (Speakers constantly implore the TED audience to help on various issues, and every year TED awards a prize to enable a brave soul to continue some life-affirming crusade. This year it gave $1 million to an India-born former physicist who wants to foment “self-organized education” where kids basically teach themselves.) “There’s definitely been some slightly lazy journalism around,” says TED CEO Chris Anderson, complaining about the criticisms of elitism and snobbery. “I really wish I could bring some of the critics around and just have them talk to some of the people around our offices.”

Still, nothing a critic says is going to change TED. But what could change TED is its very popularity. TED has done so well in distributing its talks online that the video talk, not the live appearance, is now arguably the main event. TED talks have the potential to make a career.

For instance, last year’s talk by the obscure, self-described introvert Susan Cain, shot her book to the bestseller list, won her invitations to appear on television, and qualified her for high-priced speechifying. Because so much is at stake, speakers are tempted to follow what’s become a standard format for TED talks, blending personal revelation with the activist artwork, game-changing science or alarmist global crisis that’s the putative topic. The speakers relentlessly rehearse their talks and avoid risky off-the-cuff digressions. But the reach for perfection can have ill effect.

“There’s a TED equivalent of the Hollywood phenomenon of the Uncanny Valley, where the talk doesn’t quite feel natural,” says Anderson. “It feels inauthentic — and we don’t like inauthentic. So our absolute clear advice to speakers is forget the fact that this is being recorded and might reach a million people later. Talk to four people in the audience.” (Easier said than done.)

This year Anderson took other measures to shake things up. He packed more speakers in, by cutting some of the talks from the classic 18 minutes to 12 or even six minutes. Most dramatically, he widened the net of potential speakers by vowing to choose around half of the roster via a worldwide talent search where people could audition for coveted slots. After thousands applied by video, TED chose around 300 to be coached for auditions held in 14 countries. Of TED 2013’s roster, 33 speakers came via the search.

Once in Long Beach, these “undiscovered” were joined by “the wise” — a reprise for many of the oldies but goodies of TED’s past, like Larry Lessig (reframing his attack against the corrupt political system), Stewart Brand (kick-starting an effort to reanimate extinct species), and inventor Danny Hillis (warning of an internet collapse).

For what it’s worth, most of this year’s talks, while certainly well-rehearsed, seemed to avoid the Uncanny Valley that Anderson mentioned. The topics covered a lot of ground but hit TED’s usual stations of the cross: crises like global warming and sex trafficking, robots doing cool things, sustainable gardens, and Bono being Bono. Plenty of conferences might host researchers talking about experiments where humans try to communicate with dolphins. At TED, people also earnestly talk of putting dolphins on the internet.

As always, some of the talks were duds, with a few dull ones clustered on the first day. As the second day began, I heard a veteran TED-ster griping that after leaving work for a week, traveling 6,000 miles and paying thousands of dollars, he simply wasn’t getting value. But Wednesday’s first sessions had an utterly charming Amanda Palmer explaining her gift-economy approach to music, a fire-breathing stem-winder of a Larry Lessig speech against corruption, and, in a talk by video display engineer Mary Lou Jepson, evidence that brain-scanning might soon actually read your mind.

Sergey Brin dropped in for a Google Glass demo. Elon Musk explained his strategy for getting on Mars. By lunchtime, it was clear that the gripester was readying his check for Vancouver. By sheer volume of novel stuff and strong personalities, TED can wear down the toughest skeptic.

And happily, the new blood provided by the talent search provided a refreshing change from the usual mid-list book authors striving for the golden ring. Consider 31-year-old doctoral candidate Eleanor Longden. Hailing from provincial Bradford, England, she was one of four survivors from the London TED auditions. Longden had neither a book nor an agent. It was her first trip to the United States. She spoke at a session that began with Ben Affleck (making gentle fun of TED, then getting right into the spirit by touting aid to the Congo), and later featured Vint Cerf and Peter Gabriel.

Longden’s talk — about overcoming a devastating condition where she heard uncontrollable inner voices — won an enthusiastic ovation. After the session — she called it both scary and exhilarating — she said she was relieved that it was over. It was pointed out to her that though a thousand people may have watched her on stage that evening, many thousands more would be watching her online over the coming months and years.

“Do you think so?” she asked. A TED staffer in the room, overhearing her question, giggled knowingly and quipped, “You have no idea.”

Because of that vast online afterlife, this TED conference is going to last a long time for Eleanor Longden, as well as for the brainy sprouts who diagnose cancer, play the banjo, and keep the lions away. The same goes for other TED 2013 speakers, like BLACK, the dude who did amazing yo-yo tricks in ninja garb, and the woman who gave an entire talk about shit, the teary young escapee from North Korea and even for Bono. So who cares if TED is a dartboard for the Twitterati? Whether the conference is held in Long Beach, California; Vancouver, Canada; or even North Korea; TED seems headed for a happy middle age.